SEGOLENE Royal will call for a fresh election if a recount of the Socialist Party’s leadership contest finds the result is still “too close”.
Over the weekend Royal lost by just 42 vote to Martine Aubry in a contest for the position of première secrétaire.
Outgoing leader François Hollande, Royal's former partner, has called an emergency meeting of the party's national council to oversee the result.
Aubry, the Mayor of Lille, said there was no reason for a new ballot and asked the Royal camp to behave responsibly.
"I am not going to take this," said Royal who later added: “The results have not been officially declared.”
Party figures are lining up behind their respective candidates while others are taking matters to court.
After Royal supporter Manuel Valls said he would sue for forgery against the vote result in Lille, the head of the Fédération Socialiste du Nord, Aubry supporter Gilles Pargneaux, said he would sue Valls for defamation.
Valls said: "We are very determined to prevent this victory from being stolen from us. We will use all political and legal means to contest this result."
"I call on party members to revolt," he added. "There was no victory for Martine Aubry."
The contested outcome capped weeks of bitter campaigning and dashed hopes that the party could put an end to the feuding and start building a credible opposition to President Nicolas Sarkozy and the ruling centre-right UMP party.
Royal, 55, who is president of the Poitou-Charentes regional council, had come out in pole position in the first round of voting on Thursday but fell short of a winning majority.
This weekend’s run-off election saw her lose with 49.98% to Aubry’s 50.02%.
The defeat was a blow to Royal, who has been eager for a rematch with Sarkozy in 2012.
She could still in theory seek the party nomination to run for president without holding the post of première secrétaire.
Royal had campaigned on a promise to reshape France's left by opening the party's doors to a young membership and possibly forging an alliance with centrists to beat Sarkozy.
Aubry vowed to keep the party "solidly anchored to the left," warning that a shift to the centre would alienate its traditional voter base at a time when the financial crisis has revived leftist state-driven economics.
A plain, no-nonsense politician, Aubry harboured a personal enmity toward Royal, dismissing her as a self-centred political lightweight who sought to turn the party into her own personal electoral machine.
Contrary to Royal, Aubry has kept silent about her ambitions and maintained that the party leadership must be separate from the presidential nomination.
The daughter of former European Commission president Jacques Delors, she is making a comeback after several years in the political wilderness in municipal politics in northern France.
As labour minister in the late 1990s, Aubry drafted legislation creating the 35-hour work week, a flagship Socialist measure that Sarkozy has pushed aside with recent legislation.
After three consecutive defeats in presidential elections, the Socialists have been bogged down in internal squabbling and unable to score any points off Sarkozy since he took office last year.
Sarkozy's UMP party scoffed at the outcome of the leadership race.
"I salute the Socialists' talent for self-destruction," said spokesman Dominique Paille.
Gérard Grunberg, who is head of the political research centre of Science Po university said: “This is very serious."
"I don't rule out a schism," he said, but cautioned that the Socialists would be reluctant to commit "political suicide."
"At the same time, personal hatreds ... are such that there is no process that can settle the crisis," he added.
With the party equally divided, "no one can have full legitimacy, there is no winner and no loser, and no solution for reconciliation."
Photo: Martine Aubry
Credit: Afp/Guillaume Baptiste
